After a harrowing defection to the United States in 1982, Russian teenager Marya and her father settle in Brooklyn, where Marya is drawn into a web of intrigue involving her gift of foresight, her mother's disappearance, and a boy she cannot bring herself to trust.

In post-Stalin cold war Russia, sixteen-year-old Svetlana secures her rising position in the Bolshoi Ballet by becoming an agent for the KGB's Psychological Intelligence Unit, but her relationships with two boys--one a hipster and the other a hustler--are starting to interfere with her obligations to the Motherland.